


A Reason To Live In This World

by ls00



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 06:22:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30068019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ls00/pseuds/ls00
Summary: Dealing with the immediate aftermath of the Ireland Bombing, the eldest Dylandy laments what purpose he has in life.
Relationships: Lyle Dylandy & Neil Dylandy
Kudos: 1





	A Reason To Live In This World

“I...I’ve held a gun before.”

His fourteen year old fingers coiled slowly around the handle and lifted it off the table. 

Their father had started teaching them how to hunt when they were around six or seven. They had, of course, started out with bb pellets and airsoft guns. Something to get them used to the weight in their hand. If they had trouble with that, he could never teach them much more. Trigger discipline was what their father ingrained into them at such an early level. “You could hurt someone if you don’t practice it.” Eagerly the two boys had always made sure their fingers never found the trigger unless they had a target. 

Part of him thinks their father regretted letting them pick up the hobby. When they went to the beach, the two of them always had precise aim with their water guns and chased him around for hours, soaking his favorite casual shirt. Their mother had playfully thanked them as that shirt had been the most hideous in his closet and she had been trying to find a way to tell him. Their sons had done it for her in a way that didn’t hurt Owen’s feelings too much and she had given them the gift of her homemade brownies the night after as thanks. 

They had even tasted sweeter than usual as an extra thanks.

“I’ve shot it before.”

His aim was impeccable be it a target on the range or one of the rabbits that terrorized their mother and Amy’s garden. The range goers had always been surprised that at ten his eyes were already so well trained and his patience was unyielding when it came to moving targets. It was around then that Lyle had decided to drop it. Neil had done his best to convince him to pick it back up again. When his power as the older brother didn’t work, he had begged their father to make Lyle continue but that had led to a long conversation Neil hated to remember. “You two won’t always see eye to eye or be together.” Those were words his own father had told him and when he started crying as if he was five years old again his father continued. “The best thing you can do for each other is understand that and support one another despite it.” He didn’t want to support his little brother leaving him behind but when he recalled all the time Lyle had blown up about being compared to him, he truly wondered who left who behind. Without Lyle by his side, he had learned exactly where the most vital parts were. The places where death came semi-instantaneously. While things did still twitch afterwards, there was no time to consciously process that they had just been killed. Their mother had a long talk with their father after Neil had told her about how he’d killed the rabbit she was using to make a quick snack out of. Neil, Amy, and Lyle had all overheard it. Their mother wasn’t upset, she was simply concerned about how that’d affect Neil. It was that conversation which made it abundantly clear to all of them why despite what some other kids said about parents, they never had to worry about theirs. Their father had said it would have been worse if he hadn’t taught him. “If his aim had somehow gotten worse after I told him, I would have made him quit.” 

It was hearing that which made Lyndsay breath a sigh of relief. “He’s going to be a great man one day because of you.” She had understood his full intentions in such a short conversation. It was after that when their three children had gagged at the lovey dovey way they held each other. They might have acted that way but they were all glad that their parents were like that.

“It shouldn’t be so hard to do this...so why…”

Neil’s whole body tingled, every nerve had begun sending the same message as if a plea. Don’t. It’s not a good idea. You shouldn’t.

The message of his body was trampled by the will of his heart. He wanted to see everyone again. He couldn’t take being alone. He could hardly take it when he had been left before, and now everyone was gone. His extended family were strangers to him and he wouldn’t be able to love them like he had loved his real family.

“God, it didn’t seem difficult for that bastard to blow himself and the rest of my family up, so why can’t I pull this trigger like I have a thousand times before?”

Hearing himself, it was the clearest his voice had sounded since he’d left the hospital. Tears had left his eyes by the time he’d been brought in but his voice had still been a quiet mimic of it’s former self. He had been lucky to only be brought in with a fracture in his lower ribs and foot. Nothing serious enough to even require him being here, but because of the scale of the incident, his crying, and his young age the people around him had been kind enough to bless him with a spot that belonged to someone in far worse condition than him. Any of the other Dylandy’s should have been here but no, it was the dumb eldest who’d run to get a balloon for his youngest sibling and left them sitting there, waiting on him. He could be easily healed with time, but the others around him...there was nothing in this world that could heal those people with time and even worse, there were those who hadn’t even made it in for treatment and had simply died in the pitiful rubble that used to be a mall.

As if God had an answer to his question, he heard the familiar click of the front door unlocking and rushed to stand up. He hastily put the gun down in the chair he had been sitting in. It was difficult, but he willed himself to rush out of the kitchen and look to see who had intruded on the home he would no longer be able to live in.

Lyle stood at the door, breath harsh and his body soaked with rain Neil hadn’t even realized had started. That rain served well in hiding the tears dripping down his brother’s face, however it couldn’t hide the redness under his eyes or the sorrow that laced his usually bored face.

“They...they still haven’t found them.”

Like the little brother he hated acting like, Lyle had ran up and hugged Neil impossibly tight. It was hard to remember a time when Lyle held him this close and didn’t push away like the brat he loved being.

“I was sent home by a nurse...she said they’d call…’

“They might call tonight...a lot of people are being brought in.”

His little brother’s voice couldn’t stop cracking and his body shook with the tearful breaths he’d take between words. It was obvious he wanted to act tough. Neil would let him if only just this once.

“I’m staying up.”

Neil hadn’t realized he’d just been standing there staring into the darkness of the room until suddenly he felt just how soaked Lyle was in his arms.

“You shouldn’t do that, you’ll catch a cold.”

He hugged Lyle back as tightly as he could before he gently stepped out of the embrace. He peeled Lyle’s jacket off of him and let it drop to the floor.

“Take a shower and go to sleep.”

“But bi-“

Lyle had started to speak but Neil put a hand over his mouth and looked Lyle in the eyes that resembled his so much. 

“Mom and dad would be sad if you got sick waiting on them. We’ll visit tomorrow and ask, together.”

Neil had started walking Lyle upstairs, holding him close to his side and letting his younger brother’s head lean on his shoulders. While tears mixed with rain were still falling down his cheeks, he seemed to calm down a little more.

Neil had started the bath water, choosing one of his soaps to bubble up the water. At a time Lyle might have prefered to run a quick shower to hurry to bed, but Neil knew a soothing soak would do Lyle better tonight. Before, Lyle might have complained about using Neil’s scented soap but as he sat on the edge of the bath beside his brother, he could tell Neil was too tired to argue with him. For once he’d put up with it, not just because of the tiredness in his brother’s eyes, but because he needed the smell of something familiar that didn’t seem so distant to everything. In truth, Neil was too tired to even move at all, but he did and even went so far as to idly talk with Lyle about his time at the dorm. Anything to keep his mind distracted.

Lyle had started to get ready for the bath and as such Neil was leaving the room but turned after he felt a light tug on his black coat’s sleeve. He had wanted to ask as childish as it had felt to think but he was glad that Lyle seemed to understand where he was coming from. On any other day, Neil would have teased Lyle about knowing him so well but today, silence was a better answer.

After bathing together like they hadn’t since before Amy had even been conceived, Neil lended Lyle a spare pair of his pjs. Neil left his phone on his dresser. Rather than take the guest room like he did on his trips home for the holidays, Lyle had jumped into Neil’s bed and didn’t let go of his warm older brother even after falling hard into sleep.

Neil watched him calmly and for the first time since that morning he smiled. Even as tears filled his eyes he kept smiling down at his brother.

He could recall now why it was so difficult.

There had never been a time in his life when he had seen Lyle run so fast up to him. He could never remember Lyle saying his name so desperately. The hug he’d been forced into at the time had aggravated his chest in two ways. Lyle hadn’t cared, he had simply been glad that there was something there to aggravate unlike the rest of their family who had been MIA still.

He told Lyle to sleep, but he couldn’t find it in him to close his eyes. It felt like if he did this would all disappear and it would have just been god giving him a final good memory before welcoming him through the gates of heaven to meet the rest of their family. 

He wanted to see them. More than anything in the world he had hope to see that it was just a cruel nightmare he’d given himself after watching the movie his mother had told him not to. 

There were too many “what-if” thoughts in his young mind that he wanted to stop but closing his eyes did not make them cease. It was impossible to stop thinking about all the things that could possibly be happening to him.

It seemed no matter how hard he tried, his thoughts and dreams wouldn’t be kind to him.

When he was in the hospital, he had told Lyle the story he had wanted to believe, the one that would be easier on them both. It was better to have at least the chance of their family being saved. Neil’s memories however were not as kind to him.

He remembers. He remembers all too vividly. The blood that seeped from the door and pooled just underneath the car. His mother’s kind and beautiful face smashed up against the car window and obscured by the blood that had been forced out of her due to the impact of the rubble that had crushed in the room of the car. The car that had been ready to pull off once Neil had come back with that damn balloon he didn’t even have the time to get.

There had been one fragment of hope. Amy had been sitting in the back on their mother’s side but he couldn’t see her like he could easily see what used to be his mother. 

It was a stupid idea. It was beyond stupid to try and open the door, even touch it at all. His mind however had stopped working in the way it normally did and had seemed to forget. He walked up to it and tried his best to pull the door open. It wasn’t locked, he could tell as much from how the handle felt under his hand. However it still wouldn’t open. There was a slight squelch he’d heard after pulling on it with as much force as his fourteen year old self could muster but after a moment his hands felt like they were going numb. He couldn’t hear himself at all but he must have been screaming if the way one of the rescue workers came over and grabbed him had been anything to go by. He couldn’t process it back then. There was no way he’d be able to live if he acknowledged why everyone had died.

Was it his fault for taking too long getting the balloon?

Was it Amy’s fault for asking him to in the first place?

Was it their mother’s fault for not letting Amy get one on the way in?

Was it their Father’s fault getting off of work later and making them leave later than they’d planned?

Was it Lyle’s fault for pushing their time of departure even farther when he said he couldn’t make it in time?

Was it the fault of strangers who made them wait in such god awful lines the whole day?

Was it the fault of God for allowing such an atrocity to happen? 

His eyes shot open and he was glad he hadn’t woken Lyle up. He could feel the quick pace of his breath and his mind continued to run wild with the images he’d seen that afternoon. He wanted to curl up and cry. More than anything his mind told him he wanted to run down and finish what he’d started earlier. A bullet to the head would be kinder to him than having to live with these...these images and memories and feelings in his head.

That was what he’d thought at least until his eyes wandered from the roof back down to the brother who had settled for using his chest as a pillow. His thoughts had quickly dissipated and the tears he had been doing his best to stop had finally done so. He could smile as he looked onto the face that was identical to his aside from the blemish Lyle sheepishly covered up anytime Neil mentioned it.

A single thought prevailed as his mind finally cleared and he was able to close his eyes without a worry about the day’s events.

“Lyle, I’m glad that I could be born your older brother. No matter what, I promise I’ll protect you.”

**Author's Note:**

> In one of the s1 00 novels, rather than follow the s2 interpretation of the Dylandys being in the mall, it describes Neil’s memory of the scene being that his family was killing in a car that had been crushed by rubble instead.
> 
> Judging from what’s shown in S1 ,A scene that highlights Neil looking at the car in the flashback from Neil himself ,and S2 ,The scene where the Dylandys are in the mall itself from a Setsuna’s telling of events, I think it’s very likely that Neil chose to lie and keep the actual details of the event to himself because it’s too traumatizing to actually speak about having seen what happened to his family himself so the easier to tell interpretation(if there ever was one) would be that he never saw and only knew after the fact of the event that they died.


End file.
